Former number one draft pick Kwame Brown, 8 years removed from his last season in the NBA, is back in the spotlight.
Following some unprompted digs directed at his underwhelming NBA career from Stephen Jackson, Gilbert Arenas, and Matt Barnes on the “All The Smoke” podcast, the 7-foot Georgia native took to social media to unload 20 years of pent-up anger on not only the three instigators; but many of the other critics who had – in his eyes – unfairly denigrated him over the course of his career.
In Defense of Kwame Brown
From challenging journalist Stephen A. Smith to a fistfight, saying, “Meet me in Seattle where you can have mutual combat and talk like that” to repeatedly depicting Barnes as a tragic mulatto “Which one didn’t like you, boy? Your grandaddy that was black or your grandaddy that was white?” Brown’s expletive-laden tirades against his detractors boiled down to one fundamental question: Why are you, as black men, going out of your way to put down a fellow black man for no real reason?
The fact that Jackson and company chose to double down on their remarks without apology underscores Brown’s point: we (the media and the fans collectively) have normalized Kwame Brown slander to a level far beyond that which is warranted. And the man has a right to be upset about it.
Fair Criticism or Just Straight-up Bullying?
Look — Kwame Brown wasn’t a great basketball player. No reasonable person would argue against that. Especially as a number one pick, his career averages of 6.6 points and 5.5 rebounds per game absolutely qualify him as a bust. And yes, Smith and the “All The Smoke” crew are right when they say that a professional basketball player, by nature of their status as a public figure, has to be able to take criticism.
But criticism and bullying are two different things entirely — and the ridicule of Brown from the media and the fans alike has always veered closer to the latter.
A lot of that has to do with Smith’s infamous “bonafide scrub” rant following Brown’s departure from the Los Angeles Lakers in 2008. The virality of that clip normalized “Kwa-may” mockery in the public conscience, cementing him in the basketball cultural zeitgeist as the poster child for failure. Suddenly, Brown wasn’t just a disappointing NBA player; he was a laughingstock. A meme. “Almost 12 years later and this is still one of the funniest things ever,” reads the top comment, upvoted 7.2k times, on the YouTube video of Smith’s rant.
I’ve watched that YouTube video more times than I’d like to admit. I’ve laughed along with it just like everyone else. And just like everyone else, I never once took the time to consider the fact that there was a real person at the receiving end of those words.
Kwame Brown— Let’s Put Some Respect on His Name
The fact that Brown is lashing out now is an understandable response to having his dignity trampled on over and over. It’s an appropriate reaction to having his hard work and accomplishments reduced to a punchline.
Here’s a man who made more than $63 million over a 13-year NBA career after growing up in a broken home and spending time in homeless shelters as a kid. It’s a laudable rags-to-riches story under any other circumstance. Number one pick aside, Brown’s life has been an improbable success; yet he’s viewed as anything but.
It doesn’t take a shrink to understand that Brown, like anyone who’s ever pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and made something of themselves, just wants a little bit of respect. At a time when society is finally starting to pay more attention to the importance of mental health, let’s recognize the psychic damage we can cause someone by turning their entire livelihood into a joke.
No, we don’t have to start pretending Kwame Brown was a great basketball player — but we also don’t need to go out of our way to make fun of him, either.
Main Photo:
Embed from Getty Images
